Omar is an artist, researcher, and designer. Their languages of expression traverse across digital image, sound design, coding, writing, and performative instances.
Their expanded artistic practice investigates the complex entanglement between human cognition, constructed environments, and technology; while addressing themes concerning the dichotomy of hope and defeat, time, space, memory, reality, human error, AI, language use, and hegemony. Currently, their research explores the geo-specific understanding of the End of Time as a driving notion for sociopolitical mutations.
Omar holds an MA in Arts in Public Spheres from École de design et haute école d’art du Valais - édhéa (CH), a BA in Management Information Systems (EG), and was a fellow artist at the Ashkal Alwan Home Workspace Program (LB).
They were the co-founder and creative director of Tara al Bahr, an online platform and a non-periodical publication that deals with cultural and artistic practices and contemporary urban changes in Alexandria (2015-17). And the creative director of Behna (el wekalah), a hybrid art space for traditional and unconventional cinema, contemporary art practice, and alternative education in Alexandria (2020-22).
The fundamental reality of myself is not something under my skin, but rather everything outside of it. Thus, in the act of describing it, I can only think of the multitude of possibilities, environments, and contexts within which I happen to exist.
My artistic practice draws its basis from a subjective point of view of my realities, where I see its manifestation moments as a series of attempts rather than moments of resolution. These attempts often examine the entanglement of technology, constructed environments, and human cognition.
Thus far, within these paradigms of understanding, my projects delve into the domains of the human psyche in cyberspace, the dichotomy of hope and defeat in political imaginaries, the nature/culture divide, and hegemony.
My projects usually start with research questions that stem from a geo-specific observation followed by a process of investigation that combines a theoretical investigation with practical experimentation. From there, the choice of the medium emerges. The body of works I have so far spans digital image, sound, writing, and an increasing presence of performative instances.
I usually combine more than one medium in an installation or a performative form. The machines used in my work are treated as objects in a sculptural constellation or as integral elements in set design.
Within each of my artworks, I attempt to share one more piece of myself, often in a convoluted way. I attempt to ask more questions rather than giving answers, show more doubts rather than certainty, and try to evoke an ambiguous interplay between the work and the spectators, not to deliver a specific message but to activate certain moods.